For Greg Brown, Motorola’s chief executive, the decision to split the 80-year-old company into two separately quoted businesses is a strategic gamble with no guarantees of success.

The timing of the decision – which comes less than three months after Mr Brown took over the top job at Motorola from Ed Zander – underscores the urgent problems confronting the company. These difficulties are most acute at the loss-making mobile phone business, which has seen its global share of the wireless handset market almost halve over the past year.